Sure, the Gulf of Mexico thing got most of the attention (because it’s an international body of water), but Trump’s decision to change the name of Denali back to Mount McKinley is getting some pushback too—namely from Alaska’s legislature. The Associated Press reports that Alaska’s state Senate and House have voted in favour of a resolution asking Trump to reverse course and retain Denali as the name of the continent’s tallest mountain.
Google Maps at 20
Google Maps launched 20 years ago today. Here’s what I posted at the time:
First impressions. This is frigging amazing, with smooth scrolling and zooming: you’re not constantly reloading pages like in MapQuest. Huge mapping surface. And drop shadows. […] I’m impressed by the detail. They’ve got my area, which is kind of a rural backwater: they’ve got the roads all named, but strangely not the towns. Oh well, data’s rarely perfect—especially when it’s just a beta launch. And for a beta this is awfully impressive.
A flurry of additional announcements followed in quick sucession: the launch of Google Earth, the Maps API that enabled people to build their own maps on top of Google’s interface. The mid-2000s were a busy time for online maps, let me tell you. I had so much to keep up with.
The development and origins of Google Maps, and Google Earth, are the subject of the latest and timely installment of James Killick’s “12 Map Happenings that Rocked Our World.” It seems that the Maps side of things was largely about providing Google search results through a map interface, and when you look at Google’s post commemorating the 20th anniversary, which highlights 20 features of Google Maps, it’s clear how expansive that idea has become.
James also makes reference to a book I somehow completely missed when it came out: Never Lost Again: The Google Mapping Revolution That Sparked New Industries and Augmented Our Reality, an insider history by Google project manager Bill Kilday. (Harper Business, 2018). Amazon (Canada, UK), Bookshop.
More Reactions to ‘Gulf of America’
Yesterday’s post looked mainly at Google’s response to Trump’s renaming of Denali and the Gulf of Mexico. Today some news about Apple and OpenStreetMap. On Daring Fireball, John Gruber points to OpenStreetMap forum discussions about the change, which reveals some nuances and complications despite the utter lunacy of the situation. And AppleInsider reports a small change in Apple Maps that may or may not be a placeholder:
If users navigate to the Gulf of Mexico, it still shows the 400-year-old name plain as day.
However, if a user searches “Gulf of America,” the text over the Gulf changes to reflect the search result, but the information sheet shows data and photos about the Gulf of Mexico. This seems to be a working solution that could stick, but there isn’t any word from Apple if that is the plan.
Meanwhile, according to CNN, Mexico’s response to the name change ranges somewhere between dismissive and mocking. The Conversation offers a primer on what goes into changing a U.S. place name.
On the lighter side, Martijn van Exel has created a Gulf of Mexico Watcher that checks whether it’s still being called that. More bitter in tone are the MAGA plugin and the New World Order Google Map, which offer a more … interactive response.
Previously: Naming the Gulf; Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much.
Google Maps to Use ‘Gulf of America’–Others Not So Much
Lots of news coverage about Google’s announcement that it will follow Trump’s lead and change Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America (and Denali to Mount McKinley) on Google Maps once the GNIS database has been updated—at least when showing it to American users. Mexicans will still get Gulf of Mexico, while the rest of us will get both names. See coverage at BBC, CNBC, CNN, Guardian, TechCrunch, among many many many others.
I’m not sure why some people were expecting Big Tech to lead the resistance (especially a trillion-dollar company), and over one of the easiest things to undo once this is all over: Google has made a point of accommodating government requests on its maps, showing the “right” borders and place names to the right users. See previous post: Google Maps as Non-State Authority.
But not everyone is falling into line. The British government has no plans to refer to it as the Gulf of America, nor will British maps change unless it becomes the most commonly used name: see The Independent and The Telegraph.
Meanwhile, the Associated Press is updating its stylebook in a way that splits the difference, following Trump on Denali/Mount McKinley because it’s fully within his purview but pointing to the Gulf’s international status: “The Gulf of Mexico has carried that name for more than 400 years. The Associated Press will refer to it by its original name while acknowledging the new name Trump has chosen. As a global news agency that disseminates news around the world, the AP must ensure that place names and geography are easily recognizable to all audiences.”
Previously: Naming the Gulf.
Update 9:10 PM: More detail from CNBC, which reports that “Google’s maps division on Monday reclassified the U.S. as a ‘sensitive country,’ a designation it reserves for states with strict governments and border disputes […] Google’s list of sensitive countries includes China, Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia and Iraq, among others. […] Google’s order states that the Gulf of America title change should be treated similar to the Persian Gulf, which in Arab countries is displayed on Google Maps as Arabian Gulf.”
Kathleen Jennings Shows Us How She Draws a Fantasy Map
In addition to being an author in her own right, Kathleen Jennings is an illustrator who draws maps for other fantasy novels. For a recent work—The Wild Huntress by Emily Lloyd-Jones—she takes us behind the scenes, going step by step through the process to create the map. I always love posts like these (for previous examples, see How to Make a Fantasy Map; Mapping An Ember in the Ashes; Mapping The Drowning Eyes; Mapping the Dreamlands). I also love that she’s still working with ink on paper.
Moon Lidar
Moon Lidar is a visualization of some six billion measurements from the LRO’s Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter produced by software consultancy Hobu. Details here. Pretty impressive, and pretty, but it’s more of a proof of concept than a useable tool: no labels, only an alphabetical list of features in the menu that you can zoom to. [Kottke]
A Map of Polar Bears in Iceland, Where They Don’t Belong
The Icelandic Institute of Natural History has mapped every known appearance of polar bears in Iceland: “Polar bears are not native to Iceland, although they do occasionally turn up in Iceland and are thus classified as vagrants. Information exists on just over 600 polar bears recorded as having arrived in Iceland from the beginning of human settlement on the island to the present day. This is a somewhat imprecise figure, since polar bears have undoubtedly come ashore without their presence going noticed, while bear sightings and encounters were not always documented in the past. The last polar bear observation was at Höfðaströnd in Jökulfirðir in September 2024.”
TPR on the Map Center
The Public’s Radio talks with Andrew Middleton, who you will remember took over the Map Center in Pawtucket, RI in 2023. The focus of the piece is on how Andrew came to own the store and why he doesn’t see Google and Apple as competitors. “I see them as selling information. I do not sell information. I sell a good story.”
Previously: Paper Maps: New Business, Lost Loves; A Map of Map Institutions.
A Book on Terrae Incognitae
Carla Lois’s Terrae Incognitae: Mapping the Unknown (Brill, Dec 2024) sounds interesting: it’s a look at the concept of terra incognita—the unknown land on the map—and the different forms it can take. An English translation of a book that first appeared in 2018 in Argentina. [Matthew Edney]
Rivers & Roads: The Art of Getting There
Almost missed this. Rivers & Roads: The Art of Getting There is an exhibition in the corridor gallery of Harvard’s Pusey Library that runs until 31 January 2025. It’s about getting from point A to point B over the centuries, and that hasn’t always meant using a map with a grid system. For more, see the Harvard Gazette’s interview with the exhibit’s curator, Molly Taylor-Poleskey.
Naming the Gulf
It’s been a grand total of one day since Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the Secretary of the Interior to rename the Gulf of Mexico as the Gulf of America. Or, to be more precise,
within 30 days of the date of this order, the Secretary of the Interior shall, consistent with 43 U.S.C. 364 through 364f, take all appropriate actions to rename as the “Gulf of America” the U.S. Continental Shelf area bounded on the northeast, north, and northwest by the States of Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida and extending to the seaward boundary with Mexico and Cuba in the area formerly named as the Gulf of Mexico. The Secretary shall subsequently update the GNIS to reflect the renaming of the Gulf and remove all references to the Gulf of Mexico from the GNIS, consistent with applicable law. The Board shall provide guidance to ensure all federal references to the Gulf of America, including on agency maps, contracts, and other documents and communications shall reflect its renaming.
Despite the timetable of Trump’s order, and the fact that his pick for interior secretary hasn’t as of this writing even been confirmed yet (in the meantime, presumably the order falls uncomfortably in the lap of the acting secretary, a career official), Trump’s followers are already after people to adopt the name change right now, dammit. A Republican congressman is after Apple about their maps, and the Gulf of Mexico Wikipedia article’s talk page has exploded as users come in demanding the name change. And even after the GNIS changes the name—and to be clear, what we’re talking about is the name of the portion of the Gulf of Mexico found in U.S. territorial waters, because a country can’t unilaterally change the name of an international body of water—you can’t force anyone to use that name: not other countries, not private companies, and certainly not individuals.
But oh, you can take note of who refuses to do so. “Gulf of America” is basically a loyalty test—a MAGA shibboleth.
Whatever your take on Trump’s rhetoric about the Gulf of Mexico being an integral part of the U.S., the Gulf of Mexico’s name predates that status, and not by not a little bit. The United States did not reach the Gulf of Mexico until the Louisiana Purchase of 1803, which gave it New Orleans and the mouth of the Mississippi, and the Spanish Cession of 1819, which gave it Florida and the Gulf Coast east of Texas. How much before that did the Gulf of Mexico get its name? Let’s find some answers by looking at old maps.
Updated the blogroll. It’s a lot smaller than it used to be. Who am I missing?
Watch Duty
In the wake of the recent wildfires in southern California, Watch Duty—a simple, free app that provides real-time fire maps and alerts, and which prizes, and is prized for, accurate data, collated by its volunteer reporters—has become the most popular app on the App Store and is being hailed as an essential lifeline: see The Hollywood Reporter, The New York Times, Rolling Stone, The Verge, Washington Post (paywalls on some links).
Bob Wegner, 1941-2025
Bob Wegner, an illustrator who spent 42 years drawing railroad maps and model train track plans for the Kalmbach line of magazines—Trains, Model Railroader and Classic Trains—died last week at the age of 83. Classic Trains has a rememberance; obituary here.
Karen Wynn Fonstad’s Belated NYT Obituary
Karen Wynn Fonstad, the cartographer of fantasy worlds best known for her Atlas of Middle-earth, died in March 2005 aged 59. Nearly twenty years later, she gets a comprehensive obituary in the New York Times, replete with lots of examples of her mapmaking, as part of its Overlooked series, which gives belated obituaries to “remarkable people whose deaths […] went unreported in The Times.” Paywalled; workarounds via the usual suspects.